Two months, five countries, four islands…. Now back to writing your perpetually-nearly-finished novel and building your social media empire, Sarah J. Carlson!!!

As I said in my ridiculously long, hopefully attention-grabbing title, I’ve been doing a little bit of traveling. Not only have I been traveling, as the official resident of Southeast Asia, that has made me a tour guide of sorts for the four fabulous, wonderful, amazing people who spent thousands of dollars to come over to Singapore et al to spend time with me. So…Singapore, Ho Chi Mihn City (Viet Nam), Koh Lanta Island and Chiang Mai (Thailand), Siem Reap/Angkor Wat (Cambodia), Bintan Island and Bali (Indonesia). Also one minor motorbike accident and an ambulance ride to the Cambodian hospital (um… interesting, though I don’t remember most of it because I had a concussion). Let’s just say, this white girl ended up in a private room that housed other medical supplies while the waiting room was filled with locals on cots. So sad :,( Cheap ambulance ride… 30 USD. Annnnnyway, I think that’s all the places I’ve been with my friends and family. Yeah, I’ve covered Indochina pretty well now, though there still is Laos and Myanmar….

It has been an exciting, expensive, and EXHAUSTING life that I’ve been blessed to live for the past two months. I can do without budget airlines for awhile. Air Asia, you kind of suck. Now it’s all coming to an end and it’s back to what I call homeostasis for one Sarah J.C. Singapore normal, if you will. Also that means I will get back to working on my novels, which is pretty exciting–particularly since I made a shocking discovery the week before my Southeast Asian Travel Extravaganza while doing what I really THOUGHT was a final revision. That realization…the reason why I didn’t particularly care for one of my characters. This launched a pretty major re-write that got interrupted by all that pesky travel 😛

So anyway, now it’s back to it…. Finishing up that major re-haul of my novel and re-starting the whole blogging thing. Like for real, I mean. I have been lazily posting pictures so I can get a gold star or whatever and say I’m still blogging, but I mean to get back to the whole non-writers don’t understand/promoting my work/writing in general/on being the token Yank kind of thing. Oh and posting proper pictures from my real camera (not just uploading from my iPhone cuz it’s easy) with details on my travel-ventures. Oh, the motorbike accident was just a teaser! There were very dodgy ferry rides, near ship wreck on a longtail boat, elephants, lady boys, many temples, jungle exploration complete with leeches, cat poop coffee, stegosaurus carvings in the Tomb Raider temple, extremely depressing poverty, massive monitor lizards, very annoying tourists (NOT American!), shooting guns with the Vietnamese army, durian and so, so, so much more. Plenty of fresh creative fuel for writing. Not gonna lie, I seriously contemplated taking pictures of my bruised up face daily to document the healing process in order to describe it in my novel.

But really, here’s how I feel about the return to homeostasis and finally, FINALLY getting back to writing…

Anyway…how do you get restarted after a writing/blogging/life hiatus?

Side note: To see my iPhone adventure pics, click on my Photography category, or Samples of Southeast Asia

It sounds like you have had an amazing journey in location as well as internally. This kind of discovery and exposure to parts of life you have only read about, are the things that make a good writer great. I am glad to see you back but even happier to know you nose is buried deep in your writing getting the revision hell overwith.